Not my team, but I think this is a clear-cut case of using one team to help another. Names redacted, but this is live recruiting in Knight:

Here is the full ticket thread:

"Date User7/1/2013 11:46 PM myfriendotherguy/otherguy1 has initiated battles against my DIII ___ team using his DII and DIII teams. Is that a fair play violation? I was initially alone on Player 1 and Player 2. At 5:00, he pushed me off of Player 1 using his DIII ___ team. I took the lead back at 8:00. That cycle, he showed up on Player 2 with his DII ___ team.

7/2/2013 8:55 AM Customer Support
Clarify why you feel that another owner trying to also recruit these players is a violation. Thanks.

7/2/2013 9:36 AM myfriend
Another owner could recruit these players, but he is using two teams to collude against my one team. He has a DII team with a budget and a DIII team with a budget. If I was just battling one of his teams for two recruits, it would be perfectly fine. He should not be allowed to use two teams against my one team.

7/2/2013 9:48 AM myfriendAlso, when he started the first battle at 5:00pm, I did 5 HVs to try to knock him off the next cycle. If he kept battling, my plan was to go after a big he is recruiting. His double team thwarted my plans.

7/2/2013 11:40 AM myfriend
If possible, I need to know what is going to happen before the 5:00pm EST cycle. Is going to be blocked from recruiting the players due to a fair play violation? Will I have recruiting dollars added back to my budget based on what I spent after he targeted the recruits? Is seble available to review this? Thanks.

7/2/2013 2:10 PM myfriend
otherguy just took the lead on Player 1 with his DIII school. He is already leading on Player 2 with his DII school, mostly because I am holding back money to see what you do.

7/2/2013 4:34 PM myfriendI'm running out of time. I have recruiting effort scheduled for 5:00pm, but I would much rather be spending that on a 5th recruit. This really should be an easy call for WiS to make. It's clear that otherguy is violating rules. I'm pretty sure seble has covered this type of activity in some of the statements he has made in the forum and in dev chats.7/2/2013 5:28 PM myfriendDo I have to complain on the forums to get WiS to take action?7/2/2013 11:08 PM myfriendIs WiS seriously not going to do anything about this?"

So, what say the forums? I'll leave it up to my friend whether he wants to publicly shame the other guy.

My friend sitemailed the other guy, to see if it was a mistake based on logging in wrong or whatever, and no response. \

ETA: I am, in general, VERY pro multiple teams in the same world, as I want them as full as possible, and generally think people won't resort to things like this (especially with easily-identified multiple IDs).

It's so hard to make judgement calls on this, especially not knowing both sides of the story. In the two high profile cases here, both sides came out. Billyg was honest and open about his violation, even if we disagree with the rule, and jdno came out and clarified his issue. Just trying to give the benefit of the doubt.

But I will say this, WIS has to be proactive now and make attempts to fix the situation.

Edit:

If its the case where it's a user being open about his IDs, such as jdno, then yeah messed up.

The major difference here is that the user attacked a single school with 2 of his own schools. This seems, to me, to be obvious collusion between the 2 schools, as they automatically have shared information, and in this case are using it specifically to harm another school's recruiting efforts as well as to help one another out.

If it is the same person controlling 2 different schools in the same world, then it is clearly unfair to leverage recruiting effort by poaching recruits from a single target school. The same would hold true if 2 different players colluded to target separate recruits considering the same school. For instance, father/son or brothers that share very similar IDs. IMHO, it really doesn't make any difference except, as wronoj put it, that "they automatically shared information" - res ipsa loquitur.

this is clearly unfair. wronoj, if its not too late, counsel your friend that the d2 school is probably bluffing, unless that guy is a super stud. people do this **** all the time, ive done it plenty of times with a single school, bluffing that ill take your other players when battling you for one i want... when in reality, im not about to cut off my nose to spite my face, no way in hell i sign the ****** other players someone is going for to get the one i want (not to say your friend recruits ****** players... but from the d2 school's perspective, that should naturally be the case). the other person usually gets intimidated - but a smart coach would consider the credibility of the threat. now this guy is clearly over the line, so its hard to assume they are an intelligent coach who will act as such... but its still worth considering. id probably let him win that guy with his d2 team, good chance its a bluff, and seble would probably re-instate even if hes not bluffing. id just duke it out with the d3 school.

the difference is that in this case otherguy1 has information regarding how much effort myfriend has put into the first recruit, based upon how much he has spent under his otherguy ID. it seems to me pretty obvious that otherguy should be able to win one (or both) of these recruits based on the facts that he has 2 budgets and knows more than 2 different coaches possibly could about the battles.

myfriend's response (not directly to colonel's inquiry, but mostly apropos). Each of the attacking schools is ~900 miles away from the respective recruits, and they are within 100 of myfriend:

I am trailing in both battles. Here is the problem: if I was recruiting against two different coaches, it is very unlikely that I would get challenged by the DIII coach due to my distance advantage. He wouldn't know how much I am committing to my battle against the DII school. If the DIII coach would back away, I could commit more money to fighting the DII coach. But, in this case, the coaches are the same person. He knows I am battling for both recruits. He can estimate how much I am spending on each battle and know what he needs to spend with each of his teams to win each battle.

Posted by killbatman on 7/3/2013 10:54:00 AM (view original):Seems pretty clear to me that it's foul. This is part of a Q&A with seble from the billyg multiple teams thread.

5. you dont use one school to compete against [I read this as *directly recruit against*] a third school that is competing against the other school where you coach

seble's answer: 5. Another no brainer.

This isn't what's happening...this rule implies that there are 3 teams on 1 recruit, not 2 on 1 and 2 on another...not the same thing.

I disagree. If you're the guy with 2 teams and you and wronoj's friend are on player A..why would you show up with your 2nd school on that same player? That's just dumb. I think it was implying exactly the situation we have, because attacking a 2nd recruit with your other team could give you an advantage on Player A.